Chivalry eBook

Lord God a thousand four hundred and seventy-one;
at the commandment of the right high, mighty and virtuous
Princess, my redoubted Lady, Isabella of Portugal,
by the grace of God Duchess of Burgundy and Lotharingia,
of Brabant and Limbourg, of Luxembourg and of Gueldres,
Countess of Flanders, of Artois, and of Burgundy,
Palatine of Hainault, of Holland, of Zealand and of
Namur, Marquesse of the Holy Empire, and Lady of Frisia,
of Salins and of Mechlin; whom I beseech Almighty
God less to increase than to continue in her virtuous
disposition in this world, and after our poor fleet
existence to receive eternally. Amen.”

THE PROLOGUE

THE DIZAIN OF QUEENS OF THAT NOBLE MAKER IN THE FRENCH
TONGUE, MESSIRE
NICOLAS DE CAEN, DEDICATED TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS
ISABELLA OF PORTUGAL,
OF THE HOUSE OF THE INDOMITABLE ALFONSO HENRIQUES,
AND DUCHESS DOWAGER
OF BURGUNDY. HERE BEGINS IN AUSPICIOUS WISE THE
PROLOGUE.

The Prologue

A Sa Dame

Inasmuch as it was by your command, illustrious and
exalted lady, that I have gathered together these
stories to form the present little book, you should
the less readily suppose I have presumed to dedicate
to your Serenity this trivial offering because of
my esteeming it to be not undeserving of your acceptance.
The truth is otherwise: your postulant approaches
not spurred toward you by vainglory, but rather by
equity, and equity’s plain need to acknowledge
that he who seeks to write of noble ladies must necessarily
implore at outset the patronage of her who is the
light and mainstay of our age. I humbly bring
my book to you as Phidyle approached another and less
sacred shrine, farre pio et saliente mica,
and lay before you this my valueless mean tribute not
as appropriate to you but as the best I have to offer.

It is a little book wherein I treat of divers queens
and of their love-business; and with necessitated
candor I concede my chosen field to have been harvested,
and scrupulously gleaned, by many writers of innumerable
conditions. Since Dares Phrygius wrote of Queen
Heleine, and Virgil (that shrewd necromancer) of Queen
Dido, a preponderating mass of clerks, in casting
about for high and serious matter, have chosen, as
though it were by common instinct, to dilate upon the
amours of royal women. Even in romance we scribblers
must contrive it so that the fair Nicolete shall be
discovered in the end to be no less than the King’s
daughter of Carthage, and that Sir Dooen of Mayence
shall never sink in his love affairs beneath the degree
of a Saracen princess; and we are backed in this old
procedure not only by the authority of Aristotle but,
oddly enough, by that of reason.